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case is empty.”
    “And the bangle is gone as well. Hargreaves told me as much. He’s searching all of our rooms right now.”
    “I do hope, Ranjit, he doesn’t find anything unbecoming a gentleman in yours,” Ned said, following his friend into the room.
    “You would do well not to suggest such things in front of my sister,” Ranjit said. “You know what an innocent she is.”
    “Stop teasing, Ranjit,” Sunita said. “It is a terrible thing that has happened.”
    “You only say that because you know that no bride in our family can be married without wearing the Star of the East,” Ranjit said. “Without it, you are doomed to spinsterhood.”
    “Colin will recover the jewels,” I said. “There is no need for concern. It snowed quite heavily last night, and there are no footprints that suggest someone has stolen out of the house. Lord and Lady Ackerman and their daughters were the last to leave, but you, Sunita, were still downstairs then, and still wearing the tika , so they could not be our culprits.”
    “What about Mr. Benton?” Ned asked. “He returned to the house this morning, did he not?”
    “I have not seen him,” I said.
    “I heard him speaking to your father when I went downstairs for breakfast. It was quite early, and I was surprised to see someone call at such an hour.”
    Jones opened the door. “Lady Emily, Mr. Hargreaves has requested that you join him in the Chinese Room.”
    I thanked him and crossed to the door. “Your son is right as rails, madam,” he whispered. “Cook has sent up some hot chocolate for him—warm, but not too hot, she told me to tell you, so as not to burn his little lips. And some for Masters Richard and Tom as well. It is nice to have children in the house again.”
    When I reached our room, Colin was sitting in a chair, his arms folded across his chest, and a stern look on his face. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
    “Tell you?” I asked. “You are very fierce. Did you find the jewels?”
    “I hardly know where to start,” he said. “Is there any chance that you have recently been in contact with your old friend Sebastian Capet?”
    “Sebastian? Good heavens, no,” I said. “I shouldn’t know how to reach him even if I wanted to. I haven’t seen him in years.” Sebastian Capet—as he styled himself, though I doubted that was his actual name—was something of a notorious thief, whom Colin and I had first encountered before we were married. Sebastian did not view his actions as immoral; rather he saw them as righting wrongs. He had extremely refined taste, and objected strenuously when he felt that things of beauty—paintings, jewelry, other objets d’art—were owned by individuals whom he believed did not truly appreciate their merits. Most of the time he gave whatever he had stolen to someone he considered worthy of owning it, but often he admitted that no one would better appreciate the object than himself. At the time we first met, he was collecting items that had been owned by Marie Antoinette, including a particularly fine pair of diamond earrings then in the possession of my dear friend Cécile du Lac. In the course of attempting to recover the earrings and a host of other pieces he had liberated, we learned that he had a special connection to the French royal house, one that eventually led him to promise to abandon his thievery and employ his talents in a more honorable direction. Subsequent encounters with him, however, had led me to believe that he would never be able to entirely abandon his old ways.
    “Has he reached out to you?”
    That, dear reader, was my husband’s real question. Sebastian operated under the unfortunate delusion that he was in love with me, and had, periodically, left small gifts and romantic notes for me. That the notes were written in ancient Greek infuriated Colin, who, although he steadfastly insisted that he was not jealous, felt it was not fighting fair to appeal to my love of the